Analysis of the Connections Between Law and Morals, Between Customs and Contemporaneity

Marțian Iovan

doi:10.2478/jles-2020-0004

Abstract

Abstract This paper analyses the concepts of three great Romanian thinkers –theoreticians and philosophers of law – on the relations between law, morals and manners in order to discover, based on their idea filiation in the juridical Romanian culture, the differences of method and contents between them, to identify the practical implication in the field of performing the justice and law-making. Being trained and positioned in the core of the European juridical culture of their time, they reviewed the relations between law and morals, in a rationalist and humanist way, substantiating the need for the law to follow morals, the ethical principles both historically, and practically, the law-making being comprised as well. Thus, they leave room to the expression of human’s basic rights and freedoms in a democratic judicial order, while the rules of law subordinating the morals and manner proved to be widely open to totalitarianism.

Highlights

Some great Romanian philosophers of law concepts on the concept connotations and relations between law, morals and manner are reviewed in this paper, in order to emphasize as strongly as possible the theoretical and practical implications both in the development of the sciences of law and in perfecting the law-making
Analyses of the connections between law and morals appeared since ancient times and were carried out again with a tight intensity up to our times
Influenced by the main schools of juridical philosophical thinking of the 19th century Europe, especially by the main German and French philosophy of law, the concept and conclusions reached by Xenopol on the connections between manners and law in their historical evolution were proved with sufficient argument taken from the social sciences and humanities, from history, sociology, anthropology, people's psychology, general economy, in particular, preserving their validity up to our days

Summary

Introduction

Some great Romanian philosophers of law concepts on the concept connotations and relations between law, morals and manner are reviewed in this paper, in order to emphasize as strongly as possible the theoretical and practical implications both in the development of the sciences of law and in perfecting the law-making. The practical conclusion is that law-making, codifying the juridical norms by the specialized and legitimate bodies of the State must be an expression and extension of the manners, of the feelings uniting people’s individuals, or to be a resultant of the “people developed law.” drafting laws, new juridical rules should not occur by accident, or by copying other people's law, nor to imitate the foreigners' law, without considering the basis: after all, we talk about people's souls.

Results

Conclusion